1. Field
One or more embodiments relate to a lyophilizing tray employing a reagent cartridge containing a liquid reagent for lyophilization, a lyophilizing system employing the lyophilizing tray, and a method of preparing a lyophilizing reagent.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various methods of analyzing a sample have been developed to, for example, monitor environments, examine food, or diagnose the medical condition of a patient. However, these methods require many manual operations and various devices. To perform an examination according to a predetermined protocol, those skilled in the manual operations repeatedly perform various processes including loading of a reagent, mixing, isolating and transporting, reacting, and centrifuging. However, such manual, repeated processes, may result in erroneous results due to “human error.”
To perform examinations quickly, skilled clinical pathologists are needed. However, it is difficult for even a skilled clinical pathologist to perform various examinations at the same time. Even more seriously, rapid examination results are necessary for immediate treatment of emergency patients. Accordingly, there is a need to develop various types of equipment enabling the simultaneous, rapid and precise performance of pathological examinations for given circumstances.
Related art pathological examinations are performed with large and expensive pieces of automated equipment and a relatively large amount of a sample, such as blood. Moreover, results of pathological examinations may only be available from two days (at a minimum) to two weeks after receiving the blood sample from a patient.
To address the above described problems, small and automated pieces of equipment for analyzing a sample taken from one or, if needed, a small number of patients over a short time period have been developed. An example of such a system involves the use of a microfluidic device whereby blood is loaded into a disc-shaped microfluidic device and the disc-shaped microfluidic device is rotated to isolate serum from the blood due to the centrifugal force. The isolated serum is mixed with a predetermined amount of a diluent and the mixture then flows to a plurality of reaction chambers in the disc-shaped microfluidic device. Next, the reaction chambers are filled with reagents prior to allowing the mixture to flow therein. Regents used may differ according to of the goal of the blood tests. When the serum reacts with different reagents, predetermined colors may appear. The change in color is used to perform blood analysis.